The jail authorities had approached the ATC-I for the hanging of Imran Ali submitting that he was sentenced to death by the ATC-I and later, the Lahore High Court and the Supreme Court had upheld the conviction, while the President of Pakistan also turned down his mercy petitions. Therefore, the jail officials asked the trial court to issue black warrants for his execution.

Little Zainab went missing on Jan 4, shortly after she left home to go to a neighbour's house where she studied the Holy Quran. Her parents were in Saudi Arabia to perform Umrah when the incident took place. After relatives reported her missing, the police recovered her body on Jan 9 from a heap of garbage.

The incident sparked unrest and massive protests in Kasur district resulting in violent clashes with the police.

Police later collected DNA samples of 1,187 people from January 12 to January 23 to trace the accused. On January 23, the police arrested Imran , a neighbour of Zainab, as his DNA matched with the DNA samples collected from the body of Zainab.

The convict was involved in eight other similar cases wherein six victims had died and only two survived. An anti terrorism court had awarded death sentence to Imran Ali in at least three such cases also.